Brendan Kelly

The Habs are breaking my heart

My friend Eric Siblin got it right. He shouted across the street yesterday to say the season ended with that second Buffalo goal Tuesday night. He’s absolutely right on the money. That was it. The difference between me and Eric is that he’s tuning out – or so he says – and will suddenly have all kinds of free time to read the kind of high-falutin’ books that line his bookshelves.

Me? I’ll just wallow in the misery. I’ll watch the remaining games and quietly – okay maybe not so quietly – curse the people who inflicted this sad-sack team on us.

You may have noticed that I haven’t been the happiest of Habs campers for much of this season. But it’s not because I’m a bitter guy. I’m not. It’s cause I care. And if you don’t care deeply about the Canadiens well……well I just can’t imagine.

I remember years ago talking to Donald Sutherland who, as you know, was maybe the world’s biggest Expos fan (okay the world’s biggest Expos fan this side of Mitch Melnick). And I was telling Sutherland about that ridiculous Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore baseball movie Fever Pitch, and a scene when the Fallon character, a totally crazed Red Sox fan, has an epiphany and realizes – ‘Hey it’s just a game.’

Sutherland looked at me with real anger in his eyes. ‘Just a game,’ he spat out and went on to say that might’ve been the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. And he was even more right than my pal Eric.

It’s never just a game. If it were just a game, I wouldn’t be wasting 82 nights a year – and more when you add in playoff games (not this year!). If it’s just a game, why was the entire city transformed in the spring of 2010 when a soft-spoken Slovakian netminder named Jaro Halak carried this team on one of the most unlikely playoff runs in the Habs’s storied history?

It won’t feel like just a game come early April when we switch on Hockey Night in Canada and it’s the Bruins versus the Maple Leafs. I don’t know about you but that’s gonna feel like a dagger in my heart. Over-dramatic? Hey I’m Irish. We live for that crap.

So yeah I’m sad. And that’s why I’ve spent months venting my frustration with the people who’re responsible for that heart-break. Yeah that’s right – I’m talking about Bob Gainey and his sidekick Pierre Gauthier. This morning, they don’t even deserve nicknames.